Round II

A couple of interesting things happened today, like the set of lovely bamboo kitchen utensils I received from Cathy and Andrew in the mail (thanks!). or the huge dump truck overturned like some kid’s Tonka truck in the middle of the street I was driving down.

But there was also Chicago. again. a second trip that came, went, and was now on my mind.



Finishing up last Saturday, it was a job trip too -- and in part at the same institution as before -- and yet totally different

But first: the Approach.

Why? --because the experience of flight that is utterly mindblowing everytime. If it isn’t, you probably aren’t paying the attention you could. maybe the free pretzels are distracting you.

From the window of row 11 all the fields were visible in Indiana. crops various, this one farmer seemed to be growing modular homes in one hundred-acre patch.



I hope this one is a disciple of Washington Carver’s gospel of crop rotation, and once all those houses get harvested and shipped off, that they grow something nicer next year. Like okra or something. maybe soybeans.

Geography takes on map-like qualities at 30,000 feet. This is a “great lake” and yet it looks something not unlike the far end of a bathtub I'm sitting in, the very southern tip of Lake Michigan and it's bend a managable curve on the landscape of things.



Making the way to O’Hare, Chicago offered itself up as a Lego city. and I could even make out exactly where I was supposed to be in one hours time, down to the building.



Cities mean that there are many things to be negotiated. Like the nineteen bucks the ride was supposed to cost, and the very awkward fact that your taxi driver, Gabriel, wants your phone number so you guys can hang out later on.

...

and the job interview, that is a matter of negotiation too. of holding the cards to your chest, but not too tight. of close observation. this time you could feel like you have your game on, only to walk into what feels like a cartoon episode. The people talk almost with cartoon voices, they chase themselves around, and they say cartoon-like things.

Someone may try to even convince you of the idea that you are trying to duplicitously mislead them and question your ethical bearings (!) Or: take you to dinner, and talk about the exact number kidney stones they have passed in the last two years (and what subset of those actually hurt).

Not like it was all like that, but enough of it was. Enough that it makes you think that Rocky and Bullwinkle really weren’t all that unreasonable; that it made completely sense for Rocky to be a flying squirrel. wearing a flying cap.


I notice in the notebook I was making notes in that I had tried to start a dream journal in 2002 on some of the earlier pages. Uncanny as it is, there was an entry for the very day, exactly 3 years before. It read,

“March 11- elevator dreams: fast elevator, no walls, just a floor. Dr. Wong is lecturing me.”

And I find myself in an elevator here, considering the many buttons as possible options unbridled.



One reads “lobby,” another “14.” I look for the one that says “June” or “New Orleans” but have no luck. After all, this isn’t a dream, Andy. push a button and lets go.

…

Let’s go, for example, to Prairie Avenue Bookstore, an oasis. A cathedral of design and archtitecture books. I spent some time here, taking in the pages upon pages of glossy and mesmerizing images. like of the glass house on the hillside in New Zealand. You want to crawl into one of the photos, and mostly just fall asleep in the idea of a glass house. the idea of green hillsides.

But you opt for where you are. Listen to Dylan's "Corrina, Corrina" on repeat on your walkman (thanks, A.) and you see things clearer walking about the city. you notice where the the fabric of the city is pulling up a bit from the seam, like I mentioned in an earlier post. The reader might have understandably considered such a comment as so much hyperbolic metaphor. but oh no. This time my camera is on hand, and I can have photodocumentary proof of this very real phenomenon (lower right).



And you notice ice skater’s like this little girl in Millenium Park. Who on god's green earth strapped regulation hockey skates, each about half her total body weight, too her poor, small feet??



“Get me off! I am off! I’m done!” she said to her Adult Supervision.
Damn straight.

...

S. was generous of spirit enough not only to come up to the Loop from HP again, but also listen to me tell my Tall Tales of cartoon antics from the recent days: "Did I tell you Bullwinkle is actually quite a lot taller in real life than you'd guess, and that he has a unique view of the tenure system?" People nod and listen to you in your delirium, and that is a grateful moment.

and its nice to have the company of people who dress well enough that others notice. the waitress and S. compared bracelets, glass versus bamboo. The Margaritas she served were OK there, but where was the salt? I guess it was being rationed for distribution on the icy streets…



...

And Chicago light. It is a peculiar winter light. made that much moreso because of all the tipping-tall windows and narrowed streets. sun coming down on a broad Midwest plain simply has nowhere else to go.



The reflections refracted, and refractions reacted. The Carbide and Carbon Building was emanating an especially bright and black intensity. It looked like a huge stick of graphite, a giant pencil lead. I rubbed my hands along it, and they slid and slipped. my palms covered in dark, slick powder.



This is a ghost city gleaming and I am a ghost person, all the ageless buildings and their light shining through me like my eyes weren’t brown or body not solid. that is what you call Architecture.

...

And tarmack time. that two hours you wait, sitting in the row 11, for your plane to be de-iced. you look over notes of what you learned during your visit. some of the people you met and things you saw during the interview were positively wonderful and inspiring. but you also wonder if some of Them are keeping similar notes to yours, together with the fingerprints they lifted from that water glass you were drinking from.

I myself make "Pro/Con" lists in such cases because they are helpful in making at least something in life seem black and white. because the are hopelessly reductive and ridiculous, and yet infinitely comforting to the mind. but word choice itself communicates more than simple place in a "good/bad" column can. meanings inherent to certain word choice can burn away and obviate the sentence wrapped around it, and so say whatever it is going to say for itself, quite regardless of anything else. Those are the things to try to pay most attention to...